


The Case of Molly Hooper

by mouriana



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fourth Wall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 06:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12270573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouriana/pseuds/mouriana
Summary: Just a little, indulgent, post-4th-season writing practice.  It DOES have major season 4 spoilers!





	The Case of Molly Hooper

The stranger knocked on the door, then, when no one answered, opened it.

Sherlock Holmes was sitting in his chair, fingers pressed together in front of his face, lost in thought. Just as she knew he would be. She took two steps into the room, turned and shut the door behind her, then turned back. Her hands were crossed over each other in front of her, and a small smile graced her lips.

“Mr Holmes, I have a case for you.”

Though she had entered uninvited, and he dealt regularly with persons and circumstances of a dangerous nature, it took a few moments for him to lower his hands and focus on her. She knew he would have assessed her as not a threat, which was true, and was in one of his more torpid dispositions, so he would not be overly confrontational. He scanned her briefly, not saying a word until she took the simple chair in the center of the room.

“Please don’t be boring.”

“It’s not a normal case, to be sure. It involves neither crime nor subterfuge.”

He put his hands down into his lap and sighed with some exasperation, motioning her towards the door. “Perhaps when John returns—”

She ignored his gesture. “Oh, I specifically chose this time because I knew he would be gone. This is a case only you can solve, Mr Holmes.”

He firmly got up and strode to the door, opening it and making a sweeping motion towards it. “I don’t have time for silly games. If you please—”

She merely looked at him from the seat, without the slightest indication that she would be leaving. “He has Rosie with him. And while the outcome would affect the both of them, neither of them can affect this stage.”

His eyes narrowed, and he addressed her with stern tones. “Knowledge of John’s schedule—”

She put her hand up to calm him. “Oh no, Mr Holmes. No need for alarm. My knowledge did not come by any nefarious means, and I did not acquire it with any malicious intent. I am no Charles Augustus Magnussen nor Eurus, and certainly no Moriarty. I am here to help you.”

The names mentioned struck him dumb, as she knew they would. Her smile changed from benign courtesy to concern.

“I need to be quick, as the time is short, just know that I am of no consequence and will never harm you. I need to tell you that I have broken the geas that bound you to certain pathways, and prohibited others. Given time, you may have changed your path away from what had been forced on you, but inertia is a powerful force, including in our habits, and we don’t have that time.”

He hesitated, staring at her with furrowed brow. “You’re mad.” 

She smiled a tiny smile. “Perhaps, elsewhere. But not here. This is the place where I am most especially  not mad.”

He shook his head, his eyelids pressed closed. “I haven’t—” he cut himself off.

“No, you haven’t touched a narcotic or other psychoactive substance for months, I know. I was hoping that if I gave you a few months to clear your system, I would have a slightly better chance of being believed, because it is so vitally important. But there is no more time.”

He tilted his head, face still twisted in consternation, his mouth puckered to pronounce the “w” that starts most questions.

“Quantum mechanics, Sherlock. The Everett interpretation. I know you have heard of it.”

His mouth opened and his eyes grew wide, making him look very much like a blooming flower in a time lapse video. Then he laughed. “Are you trying to convince me you come from an alternate universe?”

“Where I come from,” she continued, ignoring his reaction, “you are a literary figure that has become a universal archetype, so beloved that there have been thousands of adaptations and variations on your story, with only a few constants: Doctor Watson being the most universal, the second that you live and die very much alone, as an asexual completely satisfied with the companionship of mental exercise and your friendship with John.”

He moved back to his chair and sat down, rather hard. His face was stern, his eyes both scanning her for every tidbit of information and hiding all emotional reaction—his expression a concrete bunker that, by its sudden construction to block any display of emotion, gave away much.

She took a deep breath. “I am not a risk to you, nor John, nor Rosie, nor Mycroft, nor Mrs Hudson, nor England. I would be more than happy to speak at length of how I know the things I know,  afterwards . But right now, I am here to inform you that the geas is lifted, you are free to choose whatever companionship you wish, but if you want  all your options available, you must hurry, as the door is closing on one that, if my theory is correct, is the most important.”

He sat up and pulled his jacket down taut. “You have clearly given much time to studying me. In which case you know very well that I have chosen to remain free of the distractions of romantic entanglements.” He was trying, admirably, to regain his composure. 

She pressed her lips into a thin line, and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but  you have not. That choice was made  for  you so long ago and so subtly that you would naturally feel it to be your own, logically derived decision. But the premise upon which it is based is a lie. Affection and affinity are not distractions or weaknesses, any more than any other of the quadrillions of events that happen on the earth on a daily basis. Unlike your brother and sister, your power is not in intellect alone. That is why you are  more. ” 

He looked at her with surprise and intensity. But he did not deny it, so she pressed on. “Intellect  paired with humanity. That is where you have the advantage over both of your siblings and why it is you, not either of them, who has become a hero in this world and a nearly deified archetype in mine. That is why Eurus studied you and favored you and gave you the particular trials that she did. She could not feel as you do. Could not understand. But she knew enough how to read the  signs of attachment. So when she saw it in you—and even from Sherrinford she observed more than any of your other acquaintances—she capitalized on those feelings which you could not admit even to yourself, to create a scenario to bring things into overt focus, in hopes that she could then understand.”

The woman leaned towards him, her voice quiet. “Eurus may have confirmed her deductions, but more importantly, she made  you see, didn’t she?”

He had been able to do nothing but stare at her for the greater part of the conversation, and now clenched his jaw in another moment of stoic silence. 

The woman leaned back in her chair again. “The lie in that chamber was not the words that you spoke.  That impression was the lie.”

His jaw clenched and he shot up from his chair again. “I must ask you to leave.”

She stood now, too—not as brusquely as he had, but with equal strength. “I have seen things you thought hidden. I have watched you regain skills you lost after Victor Trevor’s death. And I have seen you deny attachments that formed almost as soon as they came into existence—almost. Belief that attachments are a weakness was a lie created by the geas. And upon that foundational lie, you built a mountain of supportive lies and habits. A falsehood with inertia so powerful you didn’t question it.”

He continued to stare at her, still stern, still incredulous, but made no more attempts to expunge her. He did not lean forward, but a hungry light seemed to kindle behind his eyes. She had seen that light before: that desperate need to  know . 

Though she was still anxious, seeing the fire begin to burn in him was a relief. This fire she had carried herself for so long, no longer had to burn her out from the inside. 

She took a deep breath. She  would not force his hand. “Two choices have been before you. The more obvious one a temptation that offers herself to you on a regular basis, whose text alert noise you have carried over from phone to phone since she first recorded it on your device some years ago. Eurus knew of her, but chose not to use her for her experiment. The other choice is, at this moment, looking back and forth between two offers lying on her desk, written on the letterhead of prestigious medical institutions in distant cities. While the first traipses the globe in games of power and personal satisfaction while hiding from criminal and legal forces alike, the second is making a choice of a single change of only a few hundred kilometers. But that small change will close that particular path to you forever.”

Seams emanated from the corners of his eyes and his jaw fell slack. Then a burst of the old cockiness returned. He smirked and sat back into in his chair, though it seemed forced. “She would never—”

“Leave? After the years of torment, teasing, temptation, and disregard? Most people, even you, were fooled by your denials and avoidance, but you had given her just enough gossamer threads of hope to continue on. You believed that the few tender moments you let slip would be forgotten and swept away by time. But they weren’t. Every moment was locked away and treasured. They kept her here, despite your self-destructive behaviors, despite sometimes weeks of no contact, despite your publicly callous treatment of her, despite the choices of romantic solitude you made clear and  _thought_ you were making of your own free will. 

“Then Eurus reached in and pulled out your innermost secret, forced you to see that which your sister knew but you did not, forced you to say words you thought would be a lie.”

She thought she could hear his heart beating faster, but his face didn’t change. He was not yet convinced.

“When I broke the geas over this place, it freed Molly from her role of eternally unrequited love, and you of all people know that she is too strong, and smart, and good to stay in that hell forever. The years of mistreatment and neglect have taken their toll, and she believes the words as you intended them to be—a lie. It is that lie that broke her. Staying in London is now more heartache for her than leaving. 

“She wants a third choice on that desk, Mr Holmes. But right now she believes with all her mind that that choice doesn’t exist.”

He stood again, unable to stand still, the mass of potential energy that had been building exploding into kinetic by a panic rooted at his core.

The stranger got very close, and with every bit of sympathetic authority she could muster, whispered, “I wish you had the time to fully realize how much power, rather than weakness, you gain from caring, and how much of a lie your self-imposed solitude has been based on. But you don’t have more than an hour to prove her wrong.”

  


  


Sherlock turned and ran from the room and down the stairs, three at a time. He closed no doors behind him, and paused in his sprint only when a cab actually responded to his distracted but desperate arm motions and stopped. 

“Bart’s Hospital,” he commanded the cabbie, then sat back in the seat, his fingers drumming a frenetic cadence against everything they touched. 

Coffee. Dinner.  Isn’t that what you do?  He no longer doubted the veracity of the stranger’s claims. He knew enough truth in them, and read enough truth in her microexpressions, to believe. He simply had to figure out what to do with the knowledge by the time he reached hospital. 

Some who had observed him with Janine might assume that he knew exactly what he should do. After all, he had played her like a fiddle for months. And the actions had been simple enough to learn—small touches, gestures, expressions, allowances. Ridiculously simple, that was. But that was a completely different type of thing. That was a case. This was real. 

This was Molly.

He took a deep breath. He had to find a way to make her stay. If he could just get her to stay, then things could go back to how they were—

No. 

That had been the problem. How things were. That had been why she hadn’t answered her phone the first time it rang during Eurus’ test. That had been her haggard expression, the one she thought he couldn’t see. That had been the anger in the back of the ambulance at John’s therapist’s. That had been the anger in the lab when he was setting the stage for Magnussen. That had been her recent conspicuous absences from the morgue and lab whenever he came to work a case. That had been the many unanswered calls over the past few months. 

His gut twisted. Murderers, terrorists, sadists, assassins, kidnappers, poisoners, torturers, garroters, psychopaths…all of them he had faced without the slightest hesitation and rarely any fear. 

This was sheer terror. 

He closed his eyes and slipped into his mind palace, laying out everything that had happened since the Eurus incident, examining each event with the new lens granted him by the stranger. Things  had  been different since that case. His perception and understanding had changed. He had thought it merely a result of the mental wall being destroyed, of reintegrating the events of his childhood into his memory and psyche. But as he walked through the palace room where Molly lived—a nearly sterile room that smelt of bleach, steel, and kittens—he realized she hadn’t be there in a very long time. Not really since…Mary. He began opening the cadaver drawers, searching, letting the odds and ends kept in there tumble out onto the floor. 

The contents of the fourth drawer he opened sent him jumping back, knocking him from his mind palace to the cab, short of breath, heart galloping. 

“You all right?” inquired the cabbie, peering at him in the rear view mirror. 

“Yes, yes.” He took a split second to reorient himself. They were only a block from Bart’s. He was tempted to leave the cab and sprint the last bit, but traffic was clear enough that this was still faster, so he crossed his arms tightly over his chest and settled back into his seat. 

The images of that last drawer lingered like the smell of a week old corpse. Lots of used needles, near-empty bottles labeled ‘7% solution,’ bent spoons, and a single piece of flesh, buried under the detritus of his addiction. He recognized the organ though it was mangled and mutilated. A human heart. When he had opened the drawer, that which buried the heart shifted, exposing it, and it gave one last, feeble thump.

The cab stopped and Sherlock tossed a twenty to the driver as he exited and began running to the building, oblivious to the cabbie asking if he wanted change. 

He paused at the hospital door and reached to pop his collar, an instinct from years of creating an image to make himself look cool. But it was equally a protective measure against the harsh stares and whispers of ‘freak’ that his sharp ears and eyes never missed. So when he realized that the collar wasn’t there, but was on the coat still hanging up in 221B, the middle third of his torso seemed to freeze solid. How had he forgotten his coat? The misstep was unnerving; his vulnerability escalated. For a long moment, he couldn’t move.

Then, taking another deep breath, he opened the door and walked into the hospital. He usually avoided the front door, preferring to slip through a side entrance that took him straight to the morgue and avoided the ordinary people. But this route was slightly faster to the lab, which held Molly’s office. 

Once he reached the lab, his pace slowed. 

How could he stop her? What could he say that would convince her that there was another choice, and, more importantly, that she might want it?

This was not the sort of thing he could bluster, blast, or even deduct his way through. Oh, he knew enough about the twistings and rules of human interactions to manipulate many a mundane outcome. But in the times when it really mattered—the times where there were actual  _feelings_ involved—he was a failure. He didn’t like remembering how badly he had done with John, coming back from destroying Moriarty’s network and thinking he would be clever in letting his best friend know he was alive. Being clever in that case failed him. And as much as that was uncomfortable to remember, Norbury was torture. This needed feelings, and it needed them done right. Falling back to his habit of being clever ruined everything that involved feelings.

He ran through a number of scenarios in his head as he walked through the lab and stood at her office door, hand raised to knock, but froze. Calculating probabilities was like breathing to him. But right now, he didn’t have any algorithms he could apply, not a single formula. Not for this. He could calculate nothing. 

He wanted to say he was sorry, but one thing he had learned: if the hurt was too much, an apology wasn’t enough. How do you fix a decade of—

The door opened, and Molly started when she saw him, but only slightly. Her features were tired…no, weary. She did not smile.

“I don’t have time to help you with anything right now, Sherlock.”

His hand, along with every possible thing he had thought to say, had dropped when she opened the door. It was impossible to ignore the envelope in her hand. Sealed, with postage, addressed to Erasmus Hospital. Brussels. 

“That’s not why I’m here.” 

His desperate need to do  _something_ pushed him to reach for the envelope, but she pulled it away, staring at him, surprised and a little angry. 

He drew back his hand. “Molly, please don’t post that.” His voice surprised even him with the pleading in its tone. 

Instead of the softening this would have evoked from her in years past, her brow lowered and her jaw hardened. She did not try to hide the envelope, or back away, merely crossed her arms over her chest, the letter protected. She glared. Her reaction, now that he allowed himself to see it, twisted in him like knives. He would have been shocked to know how much pain showed on his face, in the tiny step back he took.

The shock returned to her face, and a glimpse of Molly, the  _real_ Molly, peeked through. She scanned him as though noticing him for the first time today. “Where’s your coat?”

“I…uh…” 

Admitting he had forgotten his coat was like admitting he could not solve the case in a dime store detective novel. The thought of her thinking he was that kind of an idiot was unbearable. He opened his mouth to make up some excuse, then snapped it shut as a voice that sounded very much like John’s angry tone spoke sternly in his mind.  _Making it about you is what got you in this mess. Do you really think that’s the best way to get yourself out of it?_ He took a solid breath. 

“I…forgot it.”

She blinked. Blinked again. Concern, anger, wonder, all danced across her features, but it was the cold anger that settled in and took up residence. “I don’t know what game you’re playing at, Sherlock, but I am not in the mood for it. Not today.” She squeezed past him and began striding firmly down the hall. 

He turned towards her and the words that came out surprised even him. “I’ve disappointed you.”

She stopped, but did not turn around or answer. 

Realizing he had gained a moment’s reprieve, he continued. “I’ve used you, insulted you, lied to you, hurt you. But I never intended to break you, Molly Hooper.” 

He was surprised, considering how much it hurt to see the destruction he had caused, that it hurt even more to acknowledge it. He had to swallow hard, twice, before he could continue. “I will never forgive myself for that.”

She spun around on her heels, no longer frozen in cold, quiet anger, but afire with hot, burning acrimony and pain. “Stop it! Stop the manipulation and the lies! You have played me like a violin for years, and I have been silly and stupid and fawning and  _let_ you do it, over and over and over. But when you said those words over the phone in some sick joke to make me repeat them, I realized what an idiot I’ve been. All this time, thinking I had a chance, then thinking I could move on, then thinking I could just keep acting like everything was fine in spite of everything,  _everything_. But after that call I just…I knew I couldn’t stay here anymore. I can’t watch from the bureau drawer where you have me stored until I am useful, as you destroy yourself and everyone around you.” 

His expression softened to the verge of collapse, beaten down by the truth of her words. 

“I am so sorry.”

She was shaking with a cacophony of emotions.  _“Why_ did you have to make me say it? Don’t repeat the lie that it was for a case.  No case would require that…it doesn’t even make sense. I thought that sort of twisted game beneath you. But I was wrong.”

Her words cut through him, muscle and bone. He took a deep breath and looked down at the lino, too ashamed to look at her. His mouth was dry; making his words audible took everything he had. “It is too little, too late, I know, but I owe you the truth. I have a sister. A brilliant, glacial, twisted, little sister. I never mentioned her because I had no memories of her. I blocked them after she killed my best friend when we were children. That day…when I called…she had John and Mycroft and I trapped, and had taken the lives of at least five others in her sick experiments on me. She brought you in for the third test. She told me that there was a bomb in your house that would go off if I could not get you to say those words. I had no reason to believe her to be bluffing.”

Molly began an incredulous scoff, but stopped and paled when he looked up at her. 

“You…you’re not joking.”

“I would never, ever torture you in such a way under anything but the most desperate duress. I know…I know I have given you no reason to believe that, or to ever trust me again. But you have always counted, you have always been important. You have always mattered  _the most.”_

She paused and her features hardened a bit again. “I only matter most when it’s convenient to a case.”

He looked down at his hands, clasped in front of his torso. He felt so exposed without his coat. “That was true. In the beginning. And I stayed on that path because it was familiar. I am such an amazing actor that I convinced even myself, so I’m really not surprised you believed it.” A sardonic smile flashed across his face, which disappeared as quickly as it had come, hard memories darkening his mien. “But then I had to say those words.”

She gave that modest, short laugh she used to give, but her body didn’t twist with the innocent inquietude she would display when trying to reconcile her feelings with the facts. Now it was the stiffness of sad resignation. “You don’t need to explain any more. I don’t want to hear it.”

“No, _I_ need to explain. I was desperate to save your life, and could think of no other way to do so in the few moments I had. I didn’t  want to say those words, of course I didn’t.”

She stiffened and he instantly held up a hand and stammered, “No, Molly, you must know it all. I had never said them to  _anyone_ , and I had a firm determination to _never_ say them. I thought them debilitating, constrictive, distracting, mawkish. A weakness. But—” His voice caught and he pressed his eyes shut. 

His next words were whispered, barely audible. “After I said them…it broke something inside me. 

“Eurus had planned her experiment with exacting detail. She had chosen _you,_ specifically, very carefully. She knew with the test she constructed I would have to say those words. And she knew what would happen when I said them.” He swallowed and opened his eyes again. He had to see her as he said the rest.

“I have long felt romantic entanglements were a silly weakness, an emotional trap gilded by that trite phrase. I didn’t want to say it because I thought it was the antithesis to what I was. But Eurus remembered the truth. About me. She knew those things were part of me, behind a door I had bolted, barred, nailed, shackled, and buried  decades ago. 

“Molly, I was such an idiot. I had to say the phrase a second time because I realized it was true.” His voice cracked, and he pressed his eyes shut again, no longer brave enough to allow his indomitable perception to tell him what he did not want to see. He could say nothing more. 

A long, torturous minute followed. Then another. Thoughts that could neither be silenced nor ignored rattled and screamed until he could not listen to them any longer. He had failed. The stranger’s warning had come too late. 

“I am sorry, Molly Hooper. For everything. I wish you the utmost happiness in Belgium.”

There was a tiny  tk-ffff of folded paper hitting linoleum and Sherlock’s eyes flicked open. The envelope lay on the floor at his feet like a stabbing victim. He looked up at Molly. She had tears streaming down her face. 

“If I stay, there will be rules,” she said with every gram of sternness she could muster. “And you can’t just ignore them like you always do with John and Mrs Hudson. Don’t even try to deny that you do that; it’s legendary.”

Relief washed through him, rinsing the very strength from his limbs. A moment of slack-jawed silence later, he staggered forward. “Anything,” he said, enveloping her in his arms and letting his chin rest against the top of her head. “Anything.”

Her body was stiff and unyielding, then melted into him all at once. “I know you’re lying,” came her voice from its muffled position against his chest. “But we’ll work on it.”

He smiled, stroking her hair. “That’s my girl.”

  


  


  



End file.
